


Fireproof

by DarkxKirlia



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Antis don't @ me, Dany Stan, Feminism, Feminist, I go on a rant, Other, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkxKirlia/pseuds/DarkxKirlia
Summary: This is not the story of a woman gone mad.
Kudos: 12





	Fireproof

**Author's Note:**

> Check the end for notes, but know this: Antis can eat my ass.

They tell her that she is a woman -frail and weak and emotional-

And she stares them down with a blizzard for eyes and an inferno in her veins, 

And she says ‘dracarys’

And watches them burn.

They tell her that she is cruel,

And she shows them what cruelty looks like, nailing their perfumed, extravagantly dressed and bejeweled bodies to crosses and lets them decay under the desert sun.

She has no mercy for men who make slaves of the innocent, and if that is cruelty then let fire and blood reign, for she is as guilty of the things she did not do as she is of the things she did.

They tell her she shares the madness in her father's DNA,

And she shrieks her rage upon the heavens and she burns their city to the ground.

You think this is madness?

This is absolution-

She is only what you have dared to implicate her of.

You have taken stories of her heroism and twisted them into knots,

Molded and darkened until all that we see is horror,

Said ‘look, look at her evil.’ And then dared

To call us blind when we rejected your rhetoric.

I have seen this story before.

I have watched as men have poisoned our stories with the venom from their fangs,

Watch them threaten violence and then cry victim when we ready our artillery. 

Do you think this story is a deep narrative about corruption?

Do you think this is a story never told before? 

The Greeks were telling and retelling this fiction thousands of years before you were even born.

Clytemnestra was both queen and villain.

She Murdered her husband to be with her lover-

But we forgot that Clytemnestra was not just queen and villain, she was also a mother, 

And her husband tore her child from her arms and burned her in name of Gods who offered no mercy, 

And Agamemnon’s death was the vengeful lament of a mother and not a queen.

Before Medusa turned men to stone, she was raped in the temple of her god-

The same god that turned their back on her and cursed her for eternity.

Medea, Persephone, Circe-

Shit, that’s only the Greeks,

There are thousands of years of myth from all over the world,

And the stories surrounding women are almost always tragic or repulsive. 

There is nothing original about a powerful woman going mad.

They tell Daenerys Targaryen that her reign is over,

And she tells them her reign has just begun.

They tell her she is a monster,

And she bares her fangs,

And she shows them one. 

We are only the dragons that you have made us.

Remember that this is your narrative,

That you cannot be a victim of yourself. 

The monster that you testify to

Is only your own reflection staring back at you. 

If evolution has taught us anything, it is this; in order to survive, we must adapt to the world around us;

Grow gills to breathe underwater,

Or wings to fly.

Are you really so surprised that she is fireproof?

Are you so shocked by the graveyard she has made of your homes?

What you do not understand is that she learned destruction from the best;

Listened as it ravaged and raped,

As it promised her the sweetest wine,

As it told her that she was nothing.

She watched as it sold kids into slavery,

Nailed children to mileposts,

As it kicked and hit and abused her,

As it left her to die in the red waste and murdered her children.

She smelled the destruction with every breath,

She could never get the scent out of her nose.

They call her insane, and I call bullshit; 

This is the same fucked up story we’ve heard over thousands of years of women gone mad, and this is not the story of a woman gone mad,

It is the story of the writers who could not handle her power.

This is the story of the country that dared to scorn her, 

of the people who turned their backs on her, 

and the men who named her unstable while her loved ones' bodies were still warm. 

It is the story of a tortured and abused little girl who rose to power, 

Just so they could tear her down. 

This is not a tragedy; This is not a stunning narrative; 

It is just horrible men doing what horrible men do best; setting us on fire, and then claiming that we lit the match.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll admit, I'm feeling particularly spiteful about all the fighting and Dany hate that went down in my recent Dany fic from the other week. I wrote this poem probably over a year ago and just never posted it because I'm not really a poet, it's more of a side thing to express my feelings and handle my mental health, but now I'm spiteful, so, yeah...
> 
> RANT TIME:  
> There are a few reasons why the Dany ending is bullshit, as is all the hate Dany gets, and I'm going to briefly touch on those topics now: ("briefly")  
> 1\. Using mental illness as a crutch for 'evil.' As a person with mental illness, who considered ending their own life because they feared they were 'evil,' fuck you. Also, as a psychology major, fuck you too, BECAUSE IT'S NOT ACCURATE! Mentally ill people are no more likely to be dangerous than people without mental illness. Furthermore, mental illness doesn't just completely 180 change who you are like it did for Daenerys. (At least not on most occasions, certainly not in Daenerys'. If Mental illness was going to completely change your ethics and morals, it would be done likely during childhood.) If you're going to explore mental illness in a storyline for a character, it must be done with sympathy and understanding.  
> 2\. Putting a woman through horrific abuse and rape, having her overcome and become stronger for it, and then making her the big bad at the end. THAT'S not okay, and I don't know in what universe people think this is okay. Do you know what we don't need? being given a strong, powerful female character who's rape and abuse does not define her and watch her overcome those horrific things, only to watch her become a villain at the end because of 'madness.' FUCK. THAT. First of all, as if Hysteria wasn't still an issue being used against women a century ago, but rape/abuse survivors saw Daenerys as a beacon of hope. She made them feel powerful and hopeful about all that they could overcome, and then it was ripped away from them. For me personally, Daenerys made me feel powerful and strong. She may have only been a fictional character, but that doesn't diminish how much she helped me. To have that ripped away from me was exceedingly painful.  
> 3\. It's blatantly Anti-feminist. If you're not a feminist, just. don't. Don't comment. Don't come on my page. Just back out now, I don't want to talk to you. Your opinion doesn't matter here. It means less than dirt to me. In fact, if you gave me the choice between being shot in the foot or hearing your shitty opinion, I would choose to get shot in the foot. If you're a feminist, and you don't like Daenerys, WHAT THE HELL!?! Just, what the hell. That's all I have to say. If you don't understand how misogynistic Daenerys' ending was, and my poem didn't help you figure that out, I can't help you.  
> 4\. On top of that, it feeds into the trope that women are only useful in regard to how they affect men. Jon literally stabs Daenerys and then cries over her dead body like we're supposed to feel sorry for him! If that's not some 'women stuffed in the freezer' bullshit, I don't know what is.  
> 5\. Daenerys was often harsh; this did not mean she was insane, unfit to rule, or evil. In fact, part of the ambiguity of Dany's moral compass is one of the most fascinating things about her. Imagine if Daenerys got abused by her brother, got sold to a warlord, got raped, fell in love with her husband then lost her husband, miscarried her child, got left with nothing in the world, birthed dragons, protected those baby dragons against all odds, and then DIDN'T BURN A FEW BITCHES. You can not always agree with Daenerys' decisions and still recognize her for the bad bitch she is. If you can't, then I'm sorry, you're a little sexist. (Not sorry, actually, someone needed to tell you.) I wrote a whole meta about this on Tumblr as well, but when you compare Daenerys to the other rulers/leaders of her world and time period, she was actually pretty fair or at least tried to be. She didn't always make the best decisions, but she adapted, and she worked to own up to her mistakes.  
> 6\. It was a shitty ending. That's it. That's a perfectly acceptable reason you can hate the Daenerys ending. Because it wasn't subversive, it wasn't interesting, it wasn't new. The only people who liked the Daenerys ending are the people who always believed she was 'going to go mad' and they felt validated. And those of us who took strength from Dany? Who related to her? Well, you might've felt validated, but I felt sick to my stomach. We had relapses into trauma and setbacks in our healing. Do you think this is a joke? That it's 'just a story?' Psychologists have studies on how we use fictional worlds and characters to deal with our very real trauma.  
> So yeah, I take it personally.


End file.
